Kō Nishimura
Japanese actor (1923-1997)
Kō Nishimura (西村 晃, Nishimura Kō; 25 January 1923 – 15 April 1997) was a Japanese actor.
Known in the West primarily for supporting roles in such films as Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well and Yojimbo, Kihachi Okamoto's Sword of Doom, Yoshitaro Nomura's Zero Focus, and Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp, Nishimura also played leading roles throughout his career. He is sometimes known as Akira Nishimura, as the kanji character 晃 can be translated as either Akira or Kō.
The son of biologist and inventor Makoto Nishimura, Nishimura made his film debut in the Shin Saburi film Fusetsu Nijyunen in 1951. He won the Blue Ribbon Awards for best supporting actor in 1964 for Unholy Desire directed by Shohei Imamura. In 1982, he won the Best Actor award in the Mainichi Film Awards for his performance in Matagi.
In Japan, Nishimura is well known for playing the role of the title character in the long-running television jidaigeki series Mito Kōmon from 1983 to 1992. He also portrayed the voice of the "Mamo/Howard Lockewood" in the original Japanese version of anime film The Mystery of Mamo in 1978.
In July 2019, Tokyo's Cinemavera Shibuya honored him with a film festival celebrating both Nishimura and Yūnosuke Itō, another popular character actor who attained high status in Japan's entertainment industry.
Filmography
Films
The Burmese Harp (1956)
Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957)
Umi no Yarōdomo (1957) as Mekkachi
Arashi no naka o tsuppashire (1958)
The Ballad of Narayama (1958)
Kurenai no Tsubasa (1958) as Mizutani Tetsuji
Ballad of the Cart (1959)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Mutekiga Ore o Yondeiru (1960)
Zero Focus (1961)
Yojimbo (1961)
Burari Bura-bura Monogatari (1962)
Gorath (1962) as Murata, Minister of Space
High and Low (1963)
Rickshaw Man (1963 version)
Bushido, Samurai Saga (1963)
Attack Squadron!
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kō Nishimura” as japanese actor (1923-1997). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as japanese actor (1923-1997). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6455065. VIAF identifies the subject as 71678772. The Library of Congress control number is no00007754. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1997, 1951 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kō Nishimura” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.